One Year Ago Today My Life Was Changed Forever in the Most Wonderful Way!!! **UPDATED**

(I’ve finally found time to upload my videos of ‘THE CALL’. You’ll find them about half way through this post)

One year ago today my life was changed in the most miraculous, wonderful way!! One year ago today I received the call of a lifetime!! On August 21, 2009 I found out that I was the Mom of a precious baby girl waiting for me in Hunan, China and I couldn’t wait to meet her!!! Hannah Catherine XiaoFen had arrived with one amazing phone call!

I remember many details of that delightful, sunny day and I believe that day will forever be ingrained in my memory! I was at my friend Sharon’s house for breakfast and remember leaving and saying, ‘Today could be the day! The next time you see me I could be a Mom!!’ That being said, all was quiet in Europe where the referrals normally arrived first so truly if I was being honest with myself, I didn’t believe that that would be the day. But a girl could still dream and dream I did!!

I remember skipping down the stairs of her porch and getting into my car, cell phone glued to my left hand where it pretty much was fulltime! There was a smile across my face that nothing could remove and I truly floated throughout the office. I’m not sure how productive I was that day but they understood! Rumor Queen was refreshed numerous times each hour as I eagerly awaited any iota of information pertaining to the anticipated referral batch. Emails were flying and I physically shook each time my cell phone rang.

The morning is a blur but I remember crashing a group of co-workers celebratory lunch who were going to the Mandarin. Norma was part of that group and I just didn’t want to be alone so I went along with them, trusty cell phone always in hand or on the table directly in front of me. I remember chatting with a family at the restaurant who had a 3yo daughter from China with them. I told them I was waiting for my call to arrive any day and they were excited for me and shared some of their experiences with me as we filled our plates with rice and lemon chicken.

I arrived back in the office around 2:00 and upon refreshing Rumor Queen’s page, the first indication of a call being made had just been announced! (I’m getting goose bumps just writing this as I can remember it vividly as if it were yesterday!) I remember trying to do too many things at the same time and not knowing what to do! Call people? Email? Text? Who to call? Too many to call! Calls were being made and suddenly I knew that Monday would be my day as truly my agency, being a Canadian agency, couldn’t possibly receive their package and begin making calls that day; could they??? Wanting to find out, I once again contacted my agency and left them a message. My question to Deborah was, ‘How soon after the US agencies receive their packages do you normally get yours?’ I waited with bated breath for her to call back so that I could relax (yah….right!) and prepare myself for a call the following week.

In reality what happened SHOCKED me beyond belief. At 2:57pm I received the following email from Deborah

*********************************

Hello Cathy,

I have good news – where and when do you want me to call?

Best regards, Deborah

**********************************

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! It was time!!! My call was coming!!!! I was excited, happy, barely breathing, shaking, running in circles, trying to lock up my desk and accomplishing a whole lot of nothing! :o) Thankfully my friend Rachelle happened to pass by my office and she could immediately tell that I was in labour!! Being the good (and trained friend as all my coworkers were) she grabbed my Flip and began recording!

I immediately emailed Deborah back and asked her to call my cell at 3:30pm. By this point that was only 20 mins. away and I had a 10 min walk and drive to get to Sharon and my parents! My first call had been to my parents and then to Sharon as I quickly decided where Sharon worked would be the best place to receive the call and thankfully my parents were only blocks away from there at the time too! God had placed all the right people in just the perfect places to share ‘The Call’ with me!

Here I am attempting to send a quick email to close family and friends letting them know the call was coming.

When my file went to China in March of 2006 I placed beads in a jar. Each bead represented a LID that needed to be matched before I would receive Hannah’s referral. Here I am moving the final bead….Hannah Day was finally here!!!

I raced to the car making a variety of calls and Rachelle was wonderful enough to follow along with me capturing all of the excitement! Thank you Rachelle!

I don’t remember much about the drive to the library other than it was a beautiful warm sunny day. What I do remember is seeing my parents sitting in their car in the parking lot and yelling ‘RUN!’ to them as the call was coming at any moment! Heh, I’m sure we were quite a sight as the 3 of us ran into the library in search of Sharon. We quickly found her and Marian (who recorded this for us…thanks Marian!) and before we could even get settled the phone rang! Here it is! THE CALL!!!

Part I

Part II

There was much celebrating and many tears of joy! God had blessed me with a daughter and she was only 5 ½ months old!!

After leaving the library, the day begins to blur a little more as I remember calling a lot of people to share my amazing news. I’m a MOM!!! Calls took a few hours and there were more tears of joy and shouts of celebration! I think it’s blurred as all I could do was dream of what my daughter might look like but it was so amazing to have answers. Suddenly with one phone call I knew:

- she was a girl

- her name: Yong, Xiao Fen. Soon to become Hannah Catherine XiaoFen

- her age: 5 1/2 months

- where she was living: Dao Country SWI, Hunan, China

- when we might travel: end of October 2009

- when I was going to see her picture!!! One week later…ugh!! SOOO long to wait!

That evening I also signed up for Hannah’s SWI’s yahoo group and began reading the archives. What fun it was to meet other families who had children from DaoXian SWI. (It also ended up being amazing as one of the gals was able to find Hannah’s Finding Ad for me) on the Sunday and it was the very first picture of her I ever saw! Here is the first picture of my precious Hannah, taken within the first couple of weeks of her precious little life.

August 21, 2009 is a day that will forever be one of the most amazing days in my entire life! The Lord blessed over and over again and finally, more than 4 ½ years after I first felt God leading me to adopt from China, I had a daughter and soon she would be in my arms!

Here is her precious referral pics that I saw for the first time 8 days later on Saturday, August 29, 2009.

Today, Hannah at 17 moths holding her referral pic.

‘the LORD has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes!’ Psalm 118:23

Update:
Today Hannah and I spent the day with wonderful friends. At 3:30 we all celebrated and Doris snapped this pic of Hannah and I. Thanks Doris! I year post referral....right to the minute!